Perhaps it's just a slightly unhinged week. Those who are still paying off the bills from the therapy sessions after the 2010 election campaign – the most diminishing, grinding, pointless encounter in recent political history – can only hope this is spinning tyres, not a portent of the next several months.

If David Bradbury pops up again behind the Prime Minister on a patrol boat in Darwin in the shadow of the campaign in order to link crackdowns on asylum seekers to traffic snarls in Penrith then that's your cue to book a ticket to Brazil. If you don't remember that particular milestone, I'm sure a picture will jog your memory.

Do we really want a repeat of the 2010 federal election campaign? Does politics want a repeat of that campaign?

Not that the latest outbreak of zero-sum-game politics in this space has much to do with Labor, which is under attack on all fronts for campaigning in a swag of marginal seats in western Sydney.

An eminently sensible and uncontroversial idea practised by all who inhabit politics, go out and communicate in marginal seats you want to win – that has somehow spiralled into a circus of finger-pointing vox pops and surround-sound recrimination. I'm still not sure how that happened, but I suspect it's what happens when the ''meta'' is the message once too often. You look stooged even when you are being real, and not only being real, but humble.

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The Coalition's immigration spokesman Scott Morrison thought he might cut across ''Labor's Botched Atonement In Rooty Hill'' with some made-for-sound-bite wisdom. Mr Morrison wants ''behaviour protocols'' for asylum seekers released into the community, and mandatory notification to police and local residents that there are (putative undesirables) in the area.

He has been called out by one of his Victorian colleagues, Russell Broadbent, correctly in my view, for vilifying asylum seekers. Mr Broadbent is possessed by that most rare of aspirations: he likes to talk about policy issues on their merits, which quite possibly explains why he is on the backbench and Scott Morrison is on the frontbench with a bullet. Keeping it simple in politics generally wins.

But I don't want to get bogged down in Mr Morrison or Atonement: the inexplicable Botch Up – because some of my colleagues have already analysed these events quite closely. I also don't want to argue that political parties can't win elections by working out where the critical voters live and talking to them at the exclusion of others.

History shows campaigns can be won that way. In fact the backroom folks would chide me that this is how precisely how you win, and none of my dewy-eyed yabbering makes it otherwise – which is why we'll see Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott lap each other on the Rooty Hill ring road between now and September 14.

But this morning, I want to ask a couple of questions.

Do we really want a repeat of the 2010 federal election campaign? Does politics want a repeat of that campaign?

Western Sydney/ Asylum seekers are a big, big problem/Particularly in western Sydney/Big, big problem/What have the Romans done for me lately?

The voting public look forward to 'Truthful' Julia delivering her sermons from top of the mountain. No doubt she will go from Rooty Hill to Mount Druit, then to Mount Prichard, then to Mount Annan, and then where next? but will she find herself bumping into KRudd at shopping centres? will she greet Kevin with the same affection as a western Sydney baby? will Bradbury, Captain of McKales Navy tow a water sking Julia down the Nepean River? back to Kiribilli House to rest up before her next foray into suburban labor heart land?

Commenter

enough is enough

Location

Labor Party La La Land

Date and time

February 28, 2013, 11:35AM

The same media that trailed Abbott around for two years from fishmonger to curtain-maker and then to an empty truck driven down the pacific highway dare to call a sitting PM's visit to western Sydney "a stunt" - really?

The election campaign depends on the media giving a fair and balanced account of each party's policies - yes I realise that's difficult in the case of the opposition who don't really have any but then surely that bears investigation and reporting?

Commenter

Think Big

Location

Sydney

Date and time

February 28, 2013, 11:37AM

@MTK....I think you will find thats its SteveH and Hacka that have the obsession with trying to post first.6.30am to 7.00am every day from what I have seen.And usually its glib one liners like the F35 strike fighter is the latest "lefty obsession" (SteveH).I am still laughing about that one.Not as hard as the author of the article was though.

Commenter

Romeovoid

Date and time

February 28, 2013, 11:47AM

@enough, are you from Queensland too?It's McHale's Navy.

Commenter

The Other Guy

Location

Geelong

Date and time

February 28, 2013, 11:49AM

After an 8 month campaign will anyone really be listening by the end. At least it keeps the journalists employed.

Commenter

WhatThe

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

February 28, 2013, 11:50AM

It feels like winning the Melbourne Cup.

Thank you to all the "Slick" Abbott cheer squad for giving me the chance to use "Slick Abbott" again.

28 Feb
A Liberal backbencher has accused his party of ''vilifying'' asylum seekers after the Coalition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, called for ''behaviour protocols'' for those released into the community.

28 Feb
A Liberal backbencher has accused his own party of vilifying asylum seekers, after Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison called for special 'behaviour protocols' for those released into the community and the mandatory notification of police and residents in areas where they were housed.

28 Feb
The opposition's unhesitating call for a freeze on bridging visas for asylum seekers, sparked by a single case of alleged sexual assault, is not merely opportunistic, it is symptomatic of an election contest being defined in terms of western Sydney.